The global poodle

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a fan of poodles. We have two of them at home and they’re a constant source of delight to us. Affectionate, intelligent, obedient and yet mischievous too, whenever they think they can get away with the mischief. They’re excellent company and a wonderful contribution to our quality of life.

A lot of fun. in dogs.
But a country needs less yap and a little more bite

They yap a lot, but that can be quite funny, seeing how excited they can get about the most trivial events – a ring at the doorbell, somebody walking past the back garden with a dog, the cat getting attention they feel should be reserved for them.

They’re affectionate, always looking for company or better still a belly rub. But they’re never so affectionate as when they want something, especially if they think we’re late with their dinner. Then they can be irritatingly insistent, though their attempts at ingratiating themselves can also be quite comic.

All of that has a certain charm, and certainly a lot of humour. At least, in the dog variety of poodle. It’s much less endearing when countries engage in that behaviour. Especially the country of my roots. And, sadly, it seems that country is only too inclined to be a poodle.

It was disappointing when Tony Blair, a Prime Minister for whom I had great hopes, many of which he fulfilled, rather blotted his copybook by deciding that it mattered so much to Britain to gratify the US that he would follow Dubya, the second-worst president of all time (we hadn’t had Trump yet), into war in Iraq and Afghanistan. A war based on false premisses, and which achieved nothing for the west, only contributing to further undermining our credibility by involving us in several more defeats and generating a lot more terrorist activity against us.

It makes me nostalgic for Harold Wilson, the last Prime Minister – again from the Labour Party – to have stood up to US pressure. He refused to join the dismal failure that was war in Vietnam, much to the anger of then President Lyndon Johnson. A true bulldog. But since then, it’s been poodles all the way.

But none have been as bad as our current Prime Minister. I’m not quite sure what Boris Johnson meant by his speech about how Kermit the Frog got it wrong when he said it was hard to be green. Is this what passes for sophisticated humour in the Johnson household? It’s particularly wonderful that he included this reference soon after calling on the other nations at the UN to “grow up”.

I used to think that he deliberately acted the buffoon
Now that I've seen his attempt at wit, I realise it was no act

His attempts at wit are about as impressive as the poodles yapping. Meanwhile, his fawning ingratiation is no more convincing, and a lot less amusing, than theirs.

He tried to line Britain up with the US and Australia in the AUKUS military pact in the Pacific. Again, it was Harold Wilson who had the guts to announce over fifty years ago that Britain had no further interest East of Suez. Now Johnson in his “Global Britain” mood is trying to re-establish Britain as a power in the region. He’s even sent an aircraft carrier there. One imagines that both moves are intended to prove that Britain still has a global role to play, though it’s interesting that the deployment of the carrier only provoked the US defence secretary to comment that Britain could perhaps “be more helpful in other parts of the world”.

It looks like we’re having trouble getting the US to take us as grownups. Which, if we present ourselves to the world as people whose idea of sophistication is to quote Kermit the Frog, is perhaps not altogether surprising. 

What makes this all sad, rather than merely laughable, is that being seen as increasingly irrelevant does have serious consequences.

One of the major promises of the pro-Brexit campaign was that the loss of business with the EU would be compensated for by a major new free trade deal with the US. Presumably that’s one of the main reasons for trying to be the US poodle these days. Sadly, it’s not working, with even the irrepressibly over-optimistic Johnson having to admit that no trade deal is coming our way any time soon.

Brexiters also promised us that a trade deal with the EU would be as easy as pie. There’s no sign of anything like that on the horizon in the short term either.  That’s not helped, naturally, by the fact that Johnson is threatening to renege on the Northern Ireland protocol he signed with the EU before Brexit was completed. He seems unable to understand that if you break one deal with people, they’re far less likely to sign another. 

Again, though, the EU doesn’t just see as shifty and untrustworthy. They too see us as poodles. It was interesting that France, in anger over Australia’s breach of its contract to purchase French submarines because of that AUKUS pact, recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia. It didn’t bother with the UK, seen as the “fifth wheel on the wagon”.

For the avoidance of doubt, the fifth wheel isn’t the one used for steering.

Dodgy, falsely ingratiating, a supplicant at various tables where once Britain had a place at the EU top table, Britain looks sadly diminished on the international stage. Britain is only global as an international laughingstock rather than a world power. A sad sight to behold for those of us who have our roots there.

Was this what Brexiters were hoping for when they voted to “take back control”?